Previews

Rule of Rose

Spiffy:

Takes on interesting, different themes; use of a dog really helps gameplay along.

Iffy:

Could be controversial; will the different approach to scary gaming work?

Jennifer, the protagonist in Rule of Rose, doesn't seem quite prepared to star in a horror game. Her timid personality comes through in her every move. She gains a tiny bit of confidence with a dessert fork in her hand, but seems so scared to reach out while attacking that you can't really describe her jabs and swings as offensive. The most intimidating weapon I've come across so far is a paring knife designed to kill fruit. Like traditional survival horror games, there are times when it's best to just run away.

At the start of the game, Jennifer, whose parents have been killed, finds herself face to face with a young boy who hands her a tattered hand-drawn storybook called "The Little Princess." You can flip through the pages yourself, and as events progress you'll find that more pages have been drawn in. Creepy. The game actually uses storybook-style narration for in-game events, repeatedly referring to the main character in the third person as "the unlucky girl." It's a pretty apt description for someone who's kidnapped by a group of children, thrown in a coffin with a squirming, hairy bag and deposited in an area called the 'Filth Room' before being taunted and teased about what a bad, bad girl she's been.

The filth room turns out to be quite a safe place, really, with a friendly rubbish bin and bucket knight standing by to keep you company. The game uses a sort of onscreen narration to allow inanimate objects like wastebaskets and scissors to speak to you, and you save your game by talking to bucket knights, nothing more than a couple of broom handles and a bucket that is kind enough to offer you clues on how to advance. Touches like this give the game something of a dreamlike atmosphere, although there's plenty of harsh reality used to snap you back into fear and unease. Seeing a cleaning woman kicked and beaten to death by a swarm of tiny attackers isn't exactly whimsical stuff.

To create its own unique brand of general creepiness, Rule of Rose plays off the angle that children, not knowing any better and being free from the rules of the adult world, have a limitless capacity for evil. Or at the very least that hearing children laughing while stumbling around a dark, dilapidated orphanage with doors slamming all around you is just plain freaky. Chalk-drawn crayon tracks lead from one room to the next, creepy dismembered dolls show signs of not-so-nice playtime, and wastebaskets are inexplicably tied shut with rope. Later, a ventilation duct coming out of the wall is turned into an elephant's trunk by a surrounding doodle. A couple of hours in, the game shifts locales to an extremely unlikely place where looking out a window will lead to a strange revelation. The originality and effort put into the visuals makes it clear that Rule of Rose plans on doing things a little differently than you may be used to.